Thread: Who to use for website

Check out my site and if you see what you like contact HostingWebsite.org. They do free design and you just pay for the hosting fee. It's like a college class that builds the site and you can make your own changes.

There are two rules I look at when it comes to evaluating pitches like these. 1) if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and 2) it's business - somewhere, someone is saying "f*** you, pay me."

I'll tell you about the two platforms I am familiar with. Both have a pretty good reputation and are reasonably inexpensive.

SQUARESPACE
If you want an inexpensive DIY option, I would choose SquareSpace. It starts at $10/month, which includes the domain name and hosting as well. They have some great looking templates, and from what I understand the code in the back-end is sound. It is also Google-friendly, which will assist with your SEO.

You will need to spend some time building the website yourself, but there is no geeky stuff involved in getting a good-looking site. It will likely take you longer to write the words and take photos for your site, than it will to actually build it. They have some great instructional videos in the Support section of their site.

WORDPRESS
Many people tout WordPress as being the god of website builders/software/platforms. I use it, but there is a far greater learning curve compared with SquareSpace. It is also so flexible that the options can be a bit paralysing.

I would suggest that unless you are interested in spending time with ongoing maintenance, setting up your own back-ups and paying for quality hosting that includes good speed and security measures (such as through ZippyKid), it's probably not for you. The Wordpress software itself is free, but decent hosting is probably equivalent to what you'd spend with SquareSpace. You may also want to pay for a premium theme (with support) which tends to cost around $40 - $70.

Of course, once you get someone else to build a WordPress site for you, it can cost anything from around $500 - $5,000+. You could probably get something pretty decent for around $1,000 - $1,500, that is based on a pre-designed template. That may or may not also include your hosting.

Check out my site www.yourroofcleaner.com The company that did this one for me is very reasonable (I am very Dutch) I was very happy with the price and the way it looks and works. I think you would be ahrd pressed to find a company that can match their pricing.

I think you would be ahrd pressed to find a company that can match their pricing.

Price to Quality/Output would be a better gauge. I've yet to see any two web companies on here offer much in the way of apples to apples comparisons.

Site looks good. Love the colors. Assuming the SEO optimization and content writing was left to you, and not to the designer, I would read Google's and seomoz's Beginners SEO guides and do a sweep of your site. I'd also sweep for duplicate content as two pages I looked at have content found on a couple of other sites. One page of it seems that it might be vendor-supplied, which I would just rewrite in your own words to minimize any potential dupe issues.